


Neat Sutures, Messy Wounds

by waywardlights



Series: Craved and Hated [2]
Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, as well as the fixing up of said injury, injury mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27180037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waywardlights/pseuds/waywardlights
Summary: Wounds are never convenient, but some are easier to sew back up than others.
Relationships: Ruben "Ruvik" Victoriano/Original Character(s)
Series: Craved and Hated [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1983934
Kudos: 3





	Neat Sutures, Messy Wounds

It figured that the first and only time Darius had actually crossed paths with any Mobius agents during his three-plus years on the run would be _after_ taking on an additional charge.

Technically, Darius couldn’t really blame Ruben for this, not entirely--Darius himself had been the one to insist on staying here another night after picking up a potential lead on Mobius movement, which would undoubtedly determine _their_ next movements, but really he should’ve fucking known better. He never stayed in one place longer than a night, and this was exactly why: it painted a goddamn target on his back, and this time, on someone _else’s_ back, too.

If asked point-blank, Darius would say he wasn’t exactly the type to stick his neck out for others, and largely, that was still pretty true, but today he’d broken his cardinal rule of watching his own ass _first_ when a small group of Mobius agents had tried to flank where he and Ruben fled down a nearby alley, out of sight of any potential witnesses, in the dead of night when no one but the most foolish or daring of pedestrians were out and about. His endurance and stamina, he knew, were greater than that of the average man, but Ruben’s, in his new, hijacked body, were not.

It had been when lunging back into the alley to seize Ruben’s sleeve and yank him behind the stone masonry of the nearby building that Darius had taken a bullet in the shoulder, from one of the Mobius agents’ silenced pistols, a whisper of a shot that sent fire rushing down his left arm. Darius had been shot before, knew the impact and the air it knocked out of him, but survival overrode the shock temporarily, and he ripped the sleeve off his stolen hoodie--thank fuck he hadn’t been wearing his own jacket, else he might’ve had to go back and throttle those Mobius agents himself--to press it into the wound and staunch the bloodflow, keep it from leaving a trail.

Wounded, Darius wasn’t as fast as he might be normally, so instead he had darted down the winding alleys of the city, vaulting fences and only throwing cursory glances to see if Ruben was keeping up, because right now his head was a chaotic swirl of pain and fury and _fucking hell, this is why you’ve been going it alone, you fucking idiot, this is why you don’t risk yourself, you get fucking hurt, and if you get fucking hurt, you’re just easier prey._

Even fifteen minutes later, when Darius was sure he and Ruben had lost their pursuers, even if only temporarily, his thoughts hadn’t quieted, and the pain almost made him dizzy, but he didn’t really have much of a fucking choice except to steal the first car he could break them into and haul ass out of town--Ruben couldn’t drive, but at least Darius’ main arm was still fine. He didn’t really have the luxury of shock or even taking five fucking minutes to organize his thoughts right now.

The first and only thing he said when they arrived at the motel they’d been hiding out within for the past two days was, “Ninety seconds. Anything you can’t grab in that time stays behind or gets destroyed. Go.”

Ruben said nothing, and that was at least something Darius could appreciate--when shit hit the fan, Ruben didn’t question him. He was a bit out of his element, Darius knew, but that wouldn’t have stopped a lot of people from just questioning him every step of the way regardless.

Exactly a hundred and seven seconds later, they were back on the road.

His left arm was really starting to fucking hurt now, and he could feel the wet coolness of blood streaming down his back, even with the stolen motel towel he’d wrapped tightly around his shoulder and arm, along with the destroyed sleeve from his hoodie, so he didn’t leave any blood traces on the car when they eventually dumped it off somewhere.

Finally, Ruben sighed, and the sound felt too loud even through the persistent noise of Darius’ heart pounding in his ears. “Archer--”

“Victoriano,” Darius managed through his teeth, “if you say a fucking word right now, I will snap and drive us both off the nearest bridge, and that’s _really_ not the way I wanna fucking go.”

“I can remove the bullet.”

Darius had to take a few seconds to process that statement. It shouldn’t have surprised him, really--with how much dissecting Ruben had done in the time Darius knew him with Mobius, it made some kind of sense he’d have a pretty good idea how to put people back together, too.

But that came with its own series of issues, and a nervous, nauseous energy churned in Darius’ stomach at the thought of someone’s hands on him, _in_ him.

Logically he knew he didn’t really have much of a choice--it wasn’t like he was just going to leave the bullet _in_ there, and this was the most seriously he’d been hurt since being on the run. He knew some basic first aid, but nowhere near the skill level of removing a fucking _bullet_. Not to mention, he’d seen Ruben’s hands perform far more complex surgery before, albeit on corpses or near enough, and he was definitely the only person Darius _might_ be somewhat okay with sticking their fingers into his bleeding flesh. At least he was more straightforward than any Mobius doctor he’d seen.

Still, the idea sent chills down his spine.

Rather than acquiesce immediately, Darius grunted and shifted in the driver’s seat, which only made his wound throb with renewed pain. “We’ll see what happens when we hit a motel.”

Ten minutes later, Ruben sighed with something that smacked of exasperation, and said, “Pull over.”

Halfway lost in thought and really only managing enough energy to pay attention to driving, the words tugged Darius free of his fog, albeit momentarily, to say “Huh?”

“Pull over. You’re losing too much blood.”

Not that he’d have admitted it with a gun pointed at his head, but Darius knew Ruben was right--they wouldn’t have had time to make it to a motel even if they’d gone as soon as that bullet hit Darius’ skin, much less with the ducking and running and hotwiring they’d had to do afterwards. His head was still foggy and his vision was swimming, either because of the blood loss or rapidly-impending shock, neither of which he could reasonably drive with.

Still, it was with no small amount of reluctance that Darius pulled their stolen car over to the side of the road and carefully navigated it deeper into the nearby brush and foliage before turning the headlights off. They were still far too exposed, but this car--an old clunker of a sedan with a starter so old Darius had been able to hot-wire it the old-fashioned way--wouldn’t make it over any more rough terrain than it currently had, and even that had been pushing it. He’d just have to hope they’d shaken their Mobius pursuers enough for a brief reprieve.

“All right then, _doctor_ _,”_ Darius drawled, “how are we doing this in a car in the middle of fucking nowhere?”

“The backseat, naturally.” Rifling through his duffel, Ruben produced a sealed kit and opened it with a _click._ Darius’ gloved hands clenched on the steering wheel, grateful for the moment Ruben wouldn’t actually be able to _see_ his knuckles turning white. “Unless you have a better suggestion?”

The only suggestion that appealed to Darius at the moment was continuing to haul ass and burn rubber down the road and procrastinating having anyone’s hands on him for as long as fucking possible, but that wouldn’t exactly solve the problem of having a bullet in his shoulder, the wound continuing to sluggishly ooze blood unhelpfully reminding him of the fact.

With a groan, Darius opened the driver’s side door and pulled himself slowly, reluctantly, into the chill night air--his stolen hoodie was thin and not exactly made for winter nights in the Midwest, plus it was short a sleeve from his improvised bandage, but at least it wasn’t snowing or icy yet. Exposed to the open air, the wet blood on Darius’ back felt even colder, and another chill ran down his spine, but it was tough to say whether it was from the cold air or the impending danger of being at someone else’s mercy, debatably one of the only things he was really afraid of anymore.

_Get a fucking grip, Archer. He’ll pull the bullet out and the wound’ll heal. If he wanted to kill you he’s had plenty of fucking opportunity._

But then it wasn’t even really the idea of _dying_ that scared him. Sure, he didn’t want to kick the bucket just yet while Mobius was still around, but if it happened, it happened. Dying didn’t scare him. Helplessness did.

Shoving the train of thought to the side, Darius opened the driver’s side backseat door and reluctantly slid within, beginning to slowly, painfully remove the hoodie, shivering in the chill air as soon as it hit his skin. Slamming the backseat door to let the sedan’s ancient heater try and pump as much hot air into the space as possible, Darius was so busy trying to stay warm and not think about the bullet in his shoulder or the absolute _mess_ it would be to remove said bullet that he didn’t even notice Ruben next to him until the case he’d been holding earlier landed on the seat between them.

He saw the suture needle within, and swallowed thickly.

Ruben scowled thoughtfully at the arrangement. “This isn’t ideal. You’ve lost too much blood and you’re unsteady even sitting down. I won’t be able to stitch this--or remove the bullet--if you move too much.”

Was he that off-kilter? Darius hadn’t noticed, but then most of his attention and energy had been focused on tearing down these back roads as fast as he could push their shitty stolen car’s engine. “So?”

The scowl deepened. _“_ _So,_ if I attempt to remove the bullet now, all that’s liable to happen is spilling more of your blood.”

“I’d like to keep my blood, thanks.” Darius slurred-- _that_ _,_ he noticed--coughed, and _felt_ the burn of the bullet as his muscle flexed around it. _“_ _Fuck.”_

Ruben appeared to be thinking, brows pinched, before he finally said, “Lay flat on your stomach. Across the seats.”

Darius blinked. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a little taller than these fucking seats are long. How do you expect that to work?”

Ruben’s glare was withering and exasperated and already clearly so completely done with Darius’ bitching. “Open a car door and be silent, Archer.”

Opening the car door again also let in a blast of freezing cold air, and Darius swore under his breath, watching as it fogged up in the air in front of his face. In just his long-sleeved shirt, the wind felt biting, but he knew even that had to come off if that bullet was coming out. Wadding up the hoodie and the shirt, he made some attempt at a makeshift pillow while he shifted to lay on his stomach. The towel that had been soaking up the blood from the wound as they drove had been draped across his back, and Darius felt the improvised bandage--his hoodie’s other sleeve--be slowly peeled away, hissing at the pain.

Cold air already raised goosebumps on Darius’ skin, but at least it would hide his fear. “Get on with it before I freeze my fucking nuts off, would you?”

“It might be wise to consider changing your tone when addressing someone at your back holding a scalpel.”

Jerking his head around and biting his lip against a scream as his wound was jostled, Darius saw that, indeed, Ruben was holding a scalpel and looking at him pointedly. He felt like he was about to fucking hurl.

“Don’t do that,” he finally managed, tightly. It _could_ have been because of the pain, but fear overrode it, for the moment.

“Be more specific.”

The thing was, he really _couldn’t_ _,_ not without getting into a whole lot of depth that Ruben very likely didn’t give a shit about. It wasn’t like his experience with Mobius’ doctors--only being half-aware of all the procedures they’d probably performed on him over the years, never remembering recovering from his injuries, only having them healed whenever he awoke and being completely in the fucking dark about what had happened to him in the meantime--could be condensed into something someone could consume in a bite-sized sentence.

Darius worked his jaw before finally saying, “Don’t fucking threaten me while you’re trying to...” Darius waved his hand in a vague motion, but even that made his head spin, “...fix this. Or whatever.” Face burning, Darius turned to face the open air again and raked his hand from forehead to chin. “Forget it. Just...just fucking do it already.”

No small part of Darius wanted to watch, but knew he couldn’t, not from this angle, not where the bullet had gone in. The most he _might_ be able to see was out of his peripheral vision, but that would just be enough to make him die of curiosity and anxiety combined.

Better to face straight ahead, grit his teeth, and try to block out whatever was coming.

A shift of air at Darius’ left made him instinctively turn his head to track Ruben’s movements, but he was only moving to crouch in the space between the front and back seat, shoving it forward to give him more room. He still held the scalpel, though, and that immediately forced Darius’ head back around, refusing to look any more terrified than he probably already had.

Instead of the scalpel, though, Darius felt the swipe of gauze, and smelled antiseptic a split second later. The towel across his back was shifted further up, closer to the wound itself, and Darius tensed as he felt Ruben’s hand rest on the skin of his back, just far enough away from the bullet wound to keep his fidgeting steady without moving the wound any more than necessary. Well aware what was coming, Darius let out a long, shaky breath-- _get a fucking grip, Chrissakes--_ and felt the smooth, precise scalpel blade. There was barely any pain at first, at least until Darius _felt_ his skin part and something--someone--reach within.

“It was a shallow wound.” Ruben was saying, though the blood in Darius’ ears was roaring so damn loud by now he could barely make it out. He bit down on the wadded-up mass of cloth that used to be his hoodie and shirt until his jaw hurt, and it was the only thing that kept him from whimpering like the pathetic bastard he was. “It should heal with minimal complications.”

Beyond words for the moment, mired in the swirling maelstrom of his own fear, Darius focused on keeping his breathing steady and not doing something stupid, like bolting out from under that knife and into the freezing Midwest night without even a fucking shirt on his back.

He needed something else to focus on. From his current position, there wasn’t much. It was too dark outside to see much of anything, the moon still too early in its phase to give any useful light. The rustle of brush and bushes outside only made him more paranoid that someone was just _waiting_ to ambush them, since right now would be a prime time to do that.

Really, that only left Ruben--whose hand was still slowly extracting the bullet from Darius’ flesh. His other hand still rested on Darius’ back, a safe distance from the wound, and, almost desperately, Darius focused on _that_ instead. Anything was better than the knowledge that he’d been forced to put his life in someone else’s hands.

Resting carefully but firmly on his back, Ruben’s free hand was cool, which wasn’t a huge surprise given the temperature outside. It wasn’t a restraining touch, designed to keep him pliant, but a steadying one, which also made sense seeing as he’d insisted on this arrangement in the first place because Darius was already apparently loopy and unsteady from blood loss. Almost absently, his fingers splayed wider across the expanse of Darius' skin, and pressed a little harder; Darius released a breath as if it'd been pushed out of him, but it was a slower, steadier breath than he'd managed since all this started.

Yanked out of his wandering, somewhat-delirious train of thought by a sharp, burning pain centered on his wound, Darius couldn’t restrain the sharp cry that clawed its way free of his throat, fist clenched where it rested on the car’s seat.

“A clean removal.” Ruben declared, and Darius heard the sound of the kit being opened. “Minimal trauma to the area of impact.”

Despite himself, Darius snorted. “Your bedside manner needs work.”

“Fortunate that we are not at a bedside, then.”

Now that it seemed the worst was over, Darius found it easier to control his breathing, and turned his head as he felt Ruben looming over him again, this time with the suture needle in hand. It _was_ difficult to watch from this angle, but Darius could still see Ruben’s brow furrowed with concentration, such that he barely even noticed the first prick of the needle.

It hurt. It hurt like a motherfucker, and Darius knew he’d be sporting a sore jaw for days with how much he’d been clenching it tonight, but it was a steady pain, predictable in the prick of the needle, the _tug_ of skin, and the repeating pattern until there was a final, decisive _snip_ of scissors, and then Ruben was putting some kind of salve or cream across the stitched wound.

“Finally done?” Darius grumbled, stretching his limbs and trying not to look and sound like he’d been on the verge of a fucking panic attack for the past several minutes. “Took you long enough.”

He’d left himself open for any number of biting comebacks, but Ruben was silent. Turning back around only after reorienting himself to a sitting position and struggling back into his shirt--wrinkled, now--the look on his face was thoughtfully blank.

Darius wasn’t about to give Ruben the chance to psychoanalyze him when he was this out of sorts. “Let’s go, we’ve wasted enough fucking time here already.”

They drove past three more motels on the highway before Darius stopped at the fourth, parking the stolen car in a darkened area at the motel’s rear. It was a shitty hiding place, but they were only staying for a few hours before Darius could strike them out on foot to find another car. He tried to avoid stealing them when possible--tended to draw attention--but there was no guarantee the Mobius agents pursuing them hadn’t already cottoned on to the car Darius had been driving them around in prior to now.

Better to be paranoid than sorry.

It was only after a very careful shower and cleaning the area around his sutures with a washcloth from his pack that Darius could get a decent look at it, twisting around to look in the shitty, cloudy motel bathroom mirror. His wound was still red and inflamed, but that wasn’t exactly a shock considering he’d been shot only an hour and a half or so ago. The dark suture thread stood out against Darius’ skin, and he carefully reached one hand around to touch them, and shivered.

Could’ve been worse. Could’ve been a _hell_ of a lot worse. Would’ve, if Ruben hadn’t been there to remove it.

_Even if you did get shot trying to save his ass in the first place._

Still, Darius couldn’t be too angry about it. Wasn’t like Ruben hadn’t done something to fix that issue. Carefully tugging his shirt back on and hissing slightly where the cloth touched his fresh sutures, Darius dug around in his own duffel for his basic first-aid kit, from which he produced a bandage, and stuck it carefully on top of the stitches. That stung, too, but if he was planning on getting any sleep tonight, it was better than nothing.

In the motel room itself, Ruben sat with Darius’ laptop at the room’s desk, brow pinched with that same concentration as earlier, with a suture needle in hand, face thrown into sharp shadow by the laptop screen’s light this time instead of the dim, yellowed lighting from the sedan’s internal lights. Throwing himself--carefully--into a chair at the other end of the room, Darius heaved a sigh. “I’d fucking kill for a drink.”

“Intoxication in your current situation wouldn’t be a smart decision.”

“Well, guess I’ll bank it with all my other bad decisions in the past 24 hours: staying an extra day, leaving our car behind, getting shot, stealing another car--”

“Saving me.” It was bitter; just a hint of it, but Darius could hear it.

“I didn’t say that.” Darius shifted uncomfortably. He’d broken his cardinal rule today, the one that kept him alive for the past few years with Mobius on his ass every step of the way, and by all expectations, he _should_ regret it, but didn’t. “Besides, we had a deal.”

Ruben did turn at that, face still wearing that thoughtfully blank expression, and Darius resisted the impulse to fidget again. What had happened today went beyond the debt Darius had incurred from Ruben years ago, when Ruben had unwittingly saved Darius from being caught and killed by Mobius within hours of him going rogue, a fact both of them seemed well aware of but wouldn’t speak into existence.

“Not to mention, you did sew me back up, so we’ll just call that one even.” Rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, Darius rolled his head to avoid making eye contact. “Not like I’m vain about scars anyway.”

“Hmm,” Ruben mused, turning back to the laptop, the atmosphere ten times lighter than it’d been all night, “yes, I suppose you can’t really afford to be vain, can you?”

“Hey, the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

“Only that every scar on your body marks an occasion an enemy identified and exploited one of your weaknesses, and that you must have had many weaknesses once.”

“You know what else it means? Means they didn’t manage to kill me despite ‘identifying and exploiting’ my weakness.”

“Your ego is the only part of you untouched by scars, clearly. I suppose I achieved the honor of inflicting the first.”

With a snort, Darius rolled his eyes and took his phone out of his pocket to start tracking Mobius communications again, something he hadn’t done at all this morning and might’ve prevented them ending up in _this_ situation. His wound throbbed, a dull and persistent pain that was undeniably _there_ _,_ but easier to ignore than he thought. He thought of hands on him, _in_ him, carefully pulling out the source of the pain and sealing together whatever remained, more straightforward in intent than any Mobius doctor ever had been.

Wasn’t exactly convenient, but wounds never were. Some, at least, were easier to sew back together than others.


End file.
